


I Can't Help But Love You

by Erevae



Category: RWBY
Genre: Bumblebee - Freeform, F/F, Fluff, Occasional Feels, Post s.3 e.12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6185632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erevae/pseuds/Erevae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yang, the broken brawler<br/>Blake, the Faunus who ran.<br/>Despite everything, Yang still loves Blake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Help But Love You

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to get out some of the feelings I've had swirling around since watching the RWBY Season 3 finale.

The moonlight sifted through the rafters of a ruined building in downtown Vale. Two figures were sitting there, a woman clad in black and white, and a man wearing an open white shirt and jeans. The man turned to the raven haired woman,

"How long are you going hide out here Blake?" The cat Faunus looked over at her friend, her face an exasperated look on her face.

“I already told you Sun, I have to hide here. What do you want me to do, go out and be a team… a partner? Pretend like everything will be alright? Well it won’t be alright! It will never be alright so long as he still lives!” Blake was almost shouting, trying to convince herself as much as Sun that hiding was the best course of action for everybody. Sun gave her a soft look,

“You’re falling apart Blake. You may not want to admit it, but I can see it. You want to protect them, I get that, but if you stay like this, it’ll kill you, you hear me?” 

She sighed heavily, not responding verbally, but Sun could tell he was getting to her. “She asked for you when she woke up, did you know that?”

Blake interrupted him, a flash of fire in her eyes, “How would you know? You never visited her.”

Sun simply shrugged, “Ruby told Weiss, Weiss told Neptune, Neptune told me. It’s called socialising.” Blake immediately felt the guilt rise in her chest, like someone was pulling at her heart from behind. Seeing she was still speechless, Sun continued talking, moving across the ruined floor of splinters and debris to what remained of a door, 

“Look, I have to get back to my team, but take some advice okay? Just go see her. I know you care about her deeply, you wouldn’t leave her side until you knew she was okay. I still don’t know why you ever left her in the first place. You both risked it all to pull each other out of danger, just think about that.”  
With that, Sun was gone, his light footsteps fading away between the wrecked houses, leaving Blake along with her thoughts. She sat there for what felt like hours, an internal battle going on in her mind, ‘She must hate me.’ 

That was the crux of the problem. Blake was certain that Yang would hate her for abandoning her. The thought scared her. She had tried to convince herself that the reason she stayed away was to prove to Adam that she did not love Yang or Ruby or Weiss, and while that may have been the initial cause of her leaving, it was no longer the reason of her continued separation from her team. Now she was afraid that she had broken all trust with her team, trust she never expected to find at Beacon. 

It was that last aspect that pushed her out the door. She would not lose that trust. She had to believe that it was not destroyed, only damaged and salvageable. Hope flared in her heart at the thought, Blake looked at a nearby ruined sign, making her way in the indicated direction of the docks. She was going to Patch.

* * *

_The world was chaotic. No matter where she looked, all Yang could see was fire, panic, and Grimm. The normal pale light of the moon was tainted with a soft red glow. But none of those things registered as important to her. As she raced through the warzone that was once Beacon Academy, she was looking for one thing, and one thing only. Well… not a thing… a person, the most important person. Blake. The blonde brawler felt fear of her own rising in her chest as her search for her raven haired partner continued to yield no results._

_"Blake?!" Yang called out, engaging Ember Celica to blast away a Grimm that had crossed her path. The kick of the shotgun rounds was comforting, a solid thump resonating through her body._

_"Blake?!" She called again, "Where are you?!" No answer. Her eyes roamed around the area, desperately looking for any sign of her friend. Then, there it was, a cry of pain that reached her through the crackling of the flames, and her heart leapt with both relief and concern. Relief that she had found her partner, concern that she was in danger. She spun around, eyes instantly locking onto the source of the sound. It was Blake, she was on the ground, and standing over was a man, clad in black and crimson, wielding a red bladed sword. A sword with he had just pulled from the stomach of her partner, of her beloved Blake. Yang felt her insides twist as she felt the blade herself, her heart tightening._

_"Get away from her!" Yang cried, her body going rigid. The anger rose within her, setting her golden hair aflame and turning her eyes into that furious red that glowed with an inner rage. Her vision seemed to stretch around the edges, her fury sharpening her gaze onto the one who dared to harm Blake. Everything moved in slow motion as Yang fired Ember Celica behind her, propelling herself forward with a cry of rage, her right arm pulling back to deliver all the hate she felt for that man into a single, concentrated punch that would have blown him to ashes right there.  
Had it ever landed._

_Faster than she could track, the man had drawn his sword again and leapt towards her. Yang never felt it._

_In the depths of the night, with a heart that was beating fast enough to rival the fire rate of Coco's Gatling gun and aching so badly it felt like someone had driven a blade through it, Yang woke screaming from her nightmare memory._

For a moment, the broken brawler existed in a limbo, between the nightmare and the memories of what had transpired since the events so vividly depicted in her dream. Then reality hit her like a Ursa at full charge. The stump of her right arm was never more prominent to her than it was right now. The tortured look, brought on by the demons of the night, slid from her face, leaving the blank, empty look on her face that had become her standard. She barely heard the rush of feet as her father rushed to her room, the door flying open and arms wrapping around her, soft words of comfort falling on deaf ears. 

Taiyang tried so hard, Yang knew, but she couldn't find the will within herself to even pretend to her father that she was getting better or maintained the belief that everything was going to turn out alright. How could it? How could anything work out alright if those she cared about had left her? 'Like my mother…' Yang thought, her deep seated feeling of betrayal at her mother's absence from her life hitting hard. Ruby she could understand, her sisters undying need to do what was right and bring those who hurt others to justice, be it man or Grimm. However her mother leaving her had always bit deep in Yang because she never knew why her mother had left. But even it paled in comparison to what she felt about Blake. 

She tore her thoughts away from her secret love, not wanting to feel the pain she knew would stab at her heart if she thought of the beautiful Faunus. By pushing all feelings down and bottling them up, Yang had found a way to cope with the events. Unfortunately for Yang, it was times like these, when she had suffered a particularly bad nightmare, that those feelings threatened to break free and run their liquid trails down her cheeks. It took all she had to stop this from happening. Yang didn't want those feelings, she didn't want to feel. Feeling hurt.

She was unable to tell the time that her father had left, unable to tell what time she had finally drifted back into a thankfully empty sleep. When she woke, the sunlight was shining through her window, though it no longer held its warmth. Even her hair which once seemed to glow in the sunlight was now pale and lifeless, riddled with knots and un-brushed. The Yang from months ago would have been horrified to see her hair in such a state. But the Yang in the present didn't care, there was simply no point. What good did looking presentable have when she couldn't fight? Fighting was all she knew, and she knew she couldn't fight with one arm. 

Time passed Yang like water did a rock in a fast flowing stream, rushing onto a future goal. Days passed her in the blink of an eye, the hours of the day slipping down a hole Yang couldn't plug. Looking out the window again, Yang looked in a little more detail this time.

The world was a frozen white as winter brought snow to the Vale Kingdom. The white reminded her of Summer's cloak, and before she knew it, her thoughts were drifting to Summer Rose, the woman who raised her as her own daughter, who was more of a mother to Yang than Raven ever was. Her thoughts of Summer Rose were only broken by the soft scraping sound of Taiyang picking up the uneaten breakfast he had left for her. Summer was always so strong, but quiet and reserved, a perseverance Yang wished she had too. No matter what happened in Summer's life, she'd always pushed through. So, Yang asked herself the key question.  
"What would Summer say?" 

Yang didn't realise that she had spoken out loud. Summer would tell her to stop holding everything in and to go brush her hair. A flash of amusement made the corners of her mouth twitch at the thought. Then it was gone, drowned out in the seemingly infinite expanse of Yang's depression. 

Suddenly, her pulse was accelerating, her breathing was getting harder. Why? What had she seen? Looking carefully out of her window for the first time in weeks, she saw a splash of black against the stark white background of wintertime on Patch. A flurry of emotions rose in her chest, making her mind run in circles as she struggled to make sense of them. Yang blinked, and the splash of black was gone, nowhere in sight. Her heart plummeted, the sense of loss kicking in. Then the anger came, anger at herself. What was she doing, feeling this loss and allowing her heart to hope at what was probably just a shadow? She wasn't the one who ran away, who left her teammate when she was needed most. It wasn't her fault, so why should she suffer for it? It was unfair.

Her left fist slammed weakly into the bedsheets in frustration. She hated this, hated how she pined after Blake, hated how she couldn't hate Blake for doing what she did. Did she really want to see her Faunus friend after Blake had abandoned her? No, she did not, but she still couldn't quite get of that small voice saying, "But you love her", so she ignored it instead. Maybe if she continued to ignore it, to continue to pretend she didn't have those feelings, they'd go away. 

What remained of her right arm started to ache, prompting Yang to push herself up in bed and eat some food her father had brought so she could take her painkillers. By this time, it was already edging into the evening, so dinner was in order. She ate the bare minimum required for her to take her meds and left the rest, as she always did. Her eyelids started to droop as the painkillers took effect, the pain in her arm fading away, no longer able to remind Yang of what she had lost. 

As the day sank into night and Yang's mind slowed down, her thoughts touched on the person who had made her this way. Because despite everything she had done, she couldn't help but still love Blake. The Faunus was out there, dust knows where, and all Yang wanted was to know she was safe. That begged the question, 'Where was Blake?'

* * *

Blake never made it onto the ferry boat to Patch. She'd stood for hours in front of the boarding ramp, unable to get herself to board the boat that would take her to Yang. All the resolve she had crumbled away like dust in the wind. She hated herself for her weakness, and hoped Yang hated her too. With a shuddering breath, Blake turned away and walked down the pier and away from the ship.

"I'm sorry."

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing in years, so please give me any and all feedback/criticism. Or praise... in either order.


End file.
